25 September 2023
Another 11 hour night of sleep. Yet, I’m exhausted to the point I didn’t even try to walk this morning. My nose is running like a faucet and I’m having tiny muscle spasms.
To be honest, the spasms/twitches started after the mastectomy but seem to have gotten worse since I started chemo. It is mostly on the left side of the body (where the mastectomy occurred) and mostly clustered on the left part of my left hand, my left side of the left biceps, and just above the mastectomy scar. It was so bad one night, I was on my stomach and I could hear the twitching hitting the sheet and mattress. Other than it seemingly makes me look and feel like I’m doing a St. Vitus dance (and keeping me awake for a while) there doesn’t seem to be any harm.
There are three things I wish to discuss with Dr. Velez tomorrow. He usually stops by during the infusion. The first is the muscle spasms. The second is lack of libido and the third is the echocardiogram. Actually, there’s a fourth thing – why am I scheduled for only 7 Taxol treatments and not 9. Looks like I will keep him busy tomorrow. The good news is that I’ve had 2 semisolid stools the last two days and no diarrhea. I opted for only 1 Imodium AD this morning. I may pay for that later.
Last night at 12:45 am we had an electrical storm. It was impressive in that a clap of thunder waked me and then it proceeded to entertain me for about an hour. I actually got out of bed and went to the front porch and did a video of it.
This was the non-threatening type of storm where you could just watch it, enjoy it and not be worried that it was gonna tear the house apart. I started out listening to it in bed and watching the lightning flashes and then counting 1 Mississippi, 2 Mississippi, 3 Mississippi… and then dividing by 5 to get the distance. You could hear and calculate it getting closer and closer.
Since sound travels slower than light (767 mph on average) , it takes 5 seconds for you to hear the sound after seeing a lightning flash. I learned this as a kid, probably from some comic book (educational reading). It’s pretty accurate. By the way, you say 1 Mississippi because it takes one second to say the number and the state.
In Boy Scouts, towards the close of a meeting, the scoutmasters tried to calm us down a little before sending us home. One technique was to play a quiet game at the end. I remember Sgt. Stokes, our assistant scoutmaster, having us all sit around in a circle and estimate how long 1 minute took. When you thought a minute was up, you would stand up. I knew the 1 Mississippi trick and I won that game every time. No one figured out how I did it. Better education through comics.
I received a notice this morning from UPS that my Apple Watch would be delivered sometime between now and 7 pm tonight. Right! Strangely, I also received a notice from DHL that my new computer would also be delivered today. It wasn’t supposed to come until September 27th and the last time I checked it was still in China somewhere. DHL says they’ll deliver it between 1 and 3 pm today. Looks like it’ll be a busy day today. I need to back up everything and then start transferring files.
I like my old desktop. However, it’s been through the wars. I had to replace the hard drive once and Apple has quit doing iOS upgrades because the computer is so old. The new desktop has a smaller screen but I can compensate by enlarging images pretty easily. Then there will be the usual getting accustomed to the new formats.
Last night I decided I actually needed to eat something of a real dinner. I bought a chuck roast at Whole Foods yesterday and made Dad’s pot roast. I’ve had a lot of pot roasts over the years and none can touch Dad’s.
You first salt and pepper the roast and then sear it on all sides in a cast iron skillet. I then sprinkle a packet of Lipton’s Onion Soup mix over the roast and add 3/4 to 1 cup of water around the roast, cover with a lid and then slow cook it at 320°F for 2 1/2 to 3 hours. At the end of two hours, I take it out and add cut up potatoes, carrots, and onions, salt the vegetables, and then put the whole thing back in the oven, covered with a lid. The roast comes out fork tender and the vegetables are perfectly done. The roast was much more than I could eat (again, not much appetite) so I froze the rest for when I don’t feel like cooking. Dad would sometimes use a crock pot but I prefer the cast iron skillet version.
Hopefully, my energy level will pick up today. If not, I’m not adverse to crawling back into bed and reading and napping. Stay tuned!